Webroot deletes Windows files and causes serious problems for users

Click here to visit Original posting

Users of Webroot's endpoint security product, consumers and businesses alike, had a nasty surprise Monday when the program started flagging Windows files as malicious.

The reports quickly popped up on Twitter and continued on the Webroot community forum -- 14 pages and counting. The company came up with a manual fix to address the issue, but many users still had problems recovering their affected systems.

The problem is what's known in the antivirus industry as a "false positive" -- a case where a clean file is flagged as malicious and is blocked or deleted. False positive incidents can range in impact from merely annoying -- for example, when a program cannot run anymore -- to crippling, where the OS itself is affected and no longer boots.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here